06 August, 2017

We live in numerous planes.
Of existence. Mind. Matter. Space. Time.
My planes are currently: Love; Pain; School; Oregon; Middle-fucking-Age; Woman; Human.
Are these where I live, or just labels to bind myself?

The digisphere has become not-a-priority.
But I am writing more than I ever have.
Just in private—intimate planes, a plane for 1 + 1.
Time is playing tricks on me.
Or just demanding more of my attention in form and function than I am accustomed.

I write letters. I send letters. I receive letters. I read letters. I respond to these letters. It is a labyrinthine flurry of idea and affection and reflection and recognition and adoration and gobsmacking parallel and vulnerability and authenticity and love and forces of nature that pass over and amongst and by each other in the stratosphere, precision-launched and bureaucracy-lamed.

The time it takes for concepts to catch each other moves backwards and forwards here, discussed in prefaces of, I just wrote you about... followed by, I just wrote you about this, too... followed by a sigh or a laugh or a god fucking dammit.

My love is at a premium—$0.21 per minute, and there are n.e.v.e.r enough of them.I rage at this; at the taxation of human misery; at the chevaux de frise encamped around the man I adore, and because this is where I love I bull straight through them, even as he hollers and waves his arms, Stop! Stop! I cannot. Love requires contact. Love requires maintenance. I require him. So the stakes may tear my limbs, trap me as they are meant to do. It is not an option. Forward is the only direction. Frequency the only answer.

We do what we must do and pay the price. $0.21/minute is ridiculous, but it must be done. So I do it.

Pain is my equilibrium, a symptom of physical trauma that guides my everyday. The trauma is a guess, a mystery, a secret my body keeps from me. The symptom is all I get to see, and it is persistence personified. It is my yoke and my inconvenience and my mind-numbing sameness. It is the helplessness of those who love me. It is the uselessness of medicine. It is my fear of failure.

But I am trying—I am really fucking trying. I enrolled in school; I followed my vision—perhaps my pain plane can inform professional pursuits? I want to work with veterans who struggle with chronic pain, with trauma, to mine some meaning from the waste of so much suffering.

And I think of him, and I feel like an asshole for talking about pain and suffering and waste as though I have any conception of what those really mean, and I hear him chide me in my head:Danielle, come on now.... He is right, and where my planes contradict I defer to the sacred.
So soon I will be working with actual people with actual lives I could actually harm, or add benefit. It is notdrop-the-ball-able. It is do or die. I made a promise not to die. I promised to drive safe. I promised to show up, no matter the whats; the squint; the breakage; the quantity of current.

But there is also clarity in pain—one has no choice. It. Just. Is. It is part of me now, all of its spear-tipped appendages, no matter how they strike. Again, I wonder: How can I inflict the reality of this on someone else? And again remind myself: He knows; he chose.
Is any quantity of clarity enough to clear the emotional debris of life misconnecting? My waters are so muddy, how easy to slip, get stuck, drown.
My geography is inconsequential. It is negotiable, transferrable, and uncommitted. My ties are already broken. Home is the Bay, the Bridge, roiling banks of fog. It is also a promise; it is also a question mark.

I'll never be my age. I feel 6- and 70- and 1086- and 0-years-old, but my body has reached the precipice of disposability and worthlessness as a Womanin America. (He says no to this; he says now you are that much more beautiful, but then the evil robot steals him away from me. I cling to his intention; but what is the truth?)
My female/humanity is not for public consumption. I've given it to someone else, for safekeeping, for exploration, for surrender. This is non-negotiable.

So I have busted many boundaries and around their remains built others. I've made commitments. I've leapt into the abyss. I've shouted from rooftops. I've driven hundreds and hundreds of miles and still have so far to go.

I need an angel or a magician or some long-neglected, benevolent deity to send an apparatus that does not cost so dear (...$0.21/minute????). As an atheist, my prospects seem especially dim. But he taught me how to hope again, so I will. As more words and wants slip above me through the sky.

At the interstice of all these planes, in that sliver of light so long unseen, I suddenly found my reflection. Hazard, we say, and Huh? and Holy...fucking...shit!, and so I float, ecstatic with gratitude, to voids of trembling dark into the gravity of of my truest star, Asteri,and the planes blank with promises of future.

20 May, 2017

[Dealing in Democracy grasps at, wrestles with, questions, critiques, and explores mere tinges of the brittle and broken bones of American politics through my admittedly biased eyes and offers me an outlet through which to fumigate the horrors both presently presenting and ever-present.]-=: I originally wrote this right after the election, but got caught up with school or writing something else and so left it unpublished. Cornell West, on Bill Maher the other night, tried to argue that voting for Clinton was almost as bad as voting for Trump, and so reminded me of this argument I kept pressing on people torn over their votes. Since the cult of the individual still reigns mighty in the USA, it is still very relevant, and so here it is.:=-

18 May, 2017

You put a leg in your pajamas, NO—.
First (as things go) you must
divest that leg of previous attire, and
the other, and arms, too, and belly/neck/
chest—to prepare for pajamafication.
But why? Do dreams have a dress code? Does
sleep come quicker to the clothed? I confess
to scant preparations for sleeping, as such, just
what I was already wearing or some
soft cotton shift or nothing at all, but
the ritual changing-of-the-clothes is a con-
cept completely lost on the likes of me. On
my dislikes, too.

Perhaps it is closer to a custom—some-
thing you do because it is something
you do—or propriety—something you
do because if you don't, people or God or
whoever blah blah will think etc. It is
probably much more mundane, about
laundry or the likelihood of lice, which
not at all alters my perception of the
present—pointless.

23 February, 2017

[The Regurgitated is...exactly that.]-= #NOONEUNDERSTAAAAANDS=-This story is a tragedy, made more tragic still by all the warning signs present, the ready explanations, the reason and forethought and practical common sense so readily, so easily apparent and available for counsel. And yet, our Lady Claire of House Williams—Denier of Sense and Photoshopper of Shite, chose instead to follow her heart, a heart that wailed at such length and at such a volume that even David and Dan could hear her despair from the deepest of the seven pits in the lowest of the seven hells:

WhhhhhhhhHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY don't the FUCKING TARGARYNS have VIOLET fucking EYES on the SHOW? WhhHHHHYYYYYY?????????????? It's an INTEGRALPART of their FUCKING CHARACTERS, you mmmmaaaaAAAANNNIIIIAAACCCASS!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me explain. So I accidentally clicked on one of those "sponsored content" click-bait links, and on the buffet of desperate acts seeking ad revenue I found this gem:How the cast of Game of Thrones should really look by one Claire Williams. It lists 35 (!!) characters from the story, describes their show character, and points out the various "problems' the show suffers by not paying close enough attention to the text when deciding dye color formulas and prosthetic makeup. There is then a description of each as quoted by GRRM, a "rating" system, and sort of before and after photos: the first shows an actor in character from the show, and the second is photoshopped with the changes she thinks are necessary to fall in line with the books.I hate things like this for a number of reasons, first and foremost being a complete inability to grasp that movies and television do not exist simply to make illustrations of books and stories. It fails to comprehend that written stories have strengths and weaknesses that are different from a visual representation, and the two must thus access vital components for themselves. Lady Claire of House Williams may think that, because television is a visual medium, it should get the visual stuff "right," which leads me to my next point.Perhaps more important is the presumption of descriptions of appearance as the purest way to judge likeness of character, and anyone who has ever known another person, ever, knows this is not the case. There are times in this list when Lady Claire admits so-and-so's characterization is spot-on, but the problem is that he really has longer hair in hue closer to copper than blood. The real problem is thinking that is the real problem.Which leads me to this little project. This list is so offensive to my sensibilities of writing, story, character, open-mindedness, and not being a quibbling fistula that action must be taken. It is the annoying humorlessness of book purists like this—the grotesque elitism—that has caused some people I know to swear off the reading of these books entirely. A grievous sin, indeed.I do not know this Lady Claire of House Williams, by the way, and toward her I bear no animosity. This is just my way of coping with Things that Bug the Shit Out of Me on the Internet. All photos are as-is from the list itself. So here is my answer to "How the cast of Game of Thrones should really look" with "How Game of Thrones fans should really sound," replicated in style and spirit, fully attributed to the author. The title graphics, for better or worse, are my own.

20 January, 2017

[The Regurgitated is...exactly that.]-= “I’m a white male who owns firearms. At least for the next four years I get to keep my guns and my balls.”=-That was Richard Pease, a 53 year-old executive from New Hampshire, quoted in this article from the Guardian about the inauguration. Mr. Pease is also a shining example of the fact that if you repeat favorite lies to yourself over and over again, you're in no danger of recognizing reality or common sense. Mr. Pease, on behalf of bleeding-heart liberals everywhere. allow me to apologize for all those times we outlawed and then confiscated your firearms. Remember that? Especially that one time when it has never fucking happened? Sigh, alas, O' me. According to the logic of those two statements, he lost his balls when he was oppressed by society for being a white male, now widely recognized as great sufferers of discrimination imposed by all those women and brown people. But Mr. Pease read right through all those elitist calls for "equality" and "opportunity." His white scrotum has been sidelined for too long! We now have a president who boasts of sexual assault on camera! Who calls out Mexicans for what they really are! Who finally recognizes all Muslims are terrorists!I mean, think about it. We now finally have a president who doesn't sit around and wait for reality and data and science and experience to tell him what the truth is. Our president jumps boldly into the Twitterverse and decides on what truth is by himself. That's so damn American it probably completely voids the selection of the most un-populist cabinet say, ever, and they probably just mean the cabinet by Trump's bed where he keeps Hillary Clinton's uterus encased in Kryptonite and guarded by a battalion Trucknuts modeled from life, all self-portraits. I've heard the real set were used as security on the loans that financed his casino bankruptcy. Seriously. Fucking genius.

26 December, 2016

[The Digest is a collection of articles, videos, and other media I've viewed and found significant throughout the day. It is a way to divest myself from other social media that is more reliant on likes, click-bait, and peer-approval rather than quality, intelligence, and diversity of opinion, which are the qualities I find important. It is also a way to devote myself to daily contributions to this space...at least in theory.]-=Summary: Bill O'Reilly's "white establishment," that white establishment in action, romcoms and stalking myths, Trump demanding info on "women's programs," lead exposure and criminality, time management, Trump's nukes, losing democracy in North Carolina, Twitter freaks over interracial ad, counterproductive voting, and the climate denial of Trumpism=-Yes, I fell behind again, so I'm condensing since I have all these tabs open on my browser and don't remember when I read what and I'm more likely to publish this in one than write 4 more. I blame insomnia combined with homework to ignore my tendency toward procrastination and childish, I don't feel like it! inner demons. And I'm basically writing this to myself since I have 1 whole subscriber (hi there!) which I'm not even sure isn't myself. Commence. Articles:CNN pundit likens O'Reilly's race comments to apartheid rhetoricLeinz Vales from CNNI'm not shocked O'Reilly said these things. Example:

"The left wants power taken away from the white establishment," O'Reilly said.

I am surprised that O'Reilly would be so brutallyhonest on national television. This has been the largely unsaid, though sometimes screamed, subtext of Trump's whole...Trumpiness for a year and a half. Bakari Sellers states:

"We have to talk about the simple fact that, African-Americans, we don't want anything from white people. It's not as if we want to take something from white nationalists, or take something from white supremacists."

This makes sense, of course, but what Sellers either does not mention or does not understand is that, to the O'Reilleys and Trumps and Richard Spencers of the world, just claiming equality of opportunity and education and employment is itself a taking-away from these jackknobs. What does it take away? The superiority of vantage, the edge, the privilege they feel entitled to by virtue of white birth. So, props to Bill O'Reilly for his honesty. It's despicable and hateful and hideous, but they've been dancing around this for so long, it's a relief to see it laid bare for the world to see.

The Whats, Whys, and Wherefores

Media is everywhere. Its echoes resonate in the air we breathe, the speech we simulate, and the dreams from which we cannot wake. Movies, music, games, self-help and self-delusion and televised mock despair—they persist across all arenas of life, all avenues of interaction. Media invades our relationships, intrudes on our intimacy; it permeates our flesh, our food, burns its implosive images onto our retinas and scars our psyches with its inescapable grasp. That is, of course, why we love it. I'm not here to report the truth, to assert any superior notion of opinion or observation, but merely to serve my own self-interest: writing about those stirred and unrequited passions.

Yet my pace is sometimes a little retarded; sometimes even protarded. Consistently missing the mark relegates my thoughts to the outskirts of relevance. This is the territory of eviscerated ideals, antisocial commentary, works of art, literature, film, and concepts past their prime, things no one has thought of for years—if at all—and analyses otherwise unnecessary in a pop cultural world of self-imposed blindness. I claim no intellectual real estate, just the right to rant in the voided and echoless chamber of my own indulgence.